Time management has always been one of my strong points. I’m that reliable, dependable person who’s generally never late for anything and, as a result, I’m usually first on the scene.

Now, the reason for this is that I really hate being late. It stresses me out and I’m a natural-born stress pot, so it doesn’t take much to set my nerves on edge. Plus, I’m a perfectionist, which means that I’m basically hardwired to always be on time.

However, it seems that not everyone shares my devotion to time management and, perhaps, these are the truly liberated individuals within our society. In fact, I’m finally starting to realise that being on time isn’t all that great – especially when you find yourself sitting on your own waiting for all those people who are fashionably late or just plain late.

Yes, in this fast-paced world that we live in there’s apparently some sense in being late, as arriving on time usually means you’re early, while being late means you’re on time. I know, it’s rather complicated and somewhat bizarre. In truth, this principle baffled me for years, as I fought against the system and bemoaned the fact that other people were always late. I never realised that I was merely early.

Ironically, this blinding stroke of intuition really should’ve hit me a lot sooner in view of the fact that I live in Africa where everything runs on the proverbial ‘African time’. Evidently, most things happen at a snail’s pace in this country, nothing is ever on time and there’s no need to rush, because there’s always another day. Read the sign! It says “out to lunch” and I’ll be gone for the rest of the afternoon. And don’t bother taking your enquiry to anyone else, because they are all terribly busy trying to look preoccupied, so please call again tomorrow.

That said, there are definitely some pros to living on African time if you can get into the right frame of mind. Obviously, no one wants to spend their life standing in queues, which is what we often do here in Africa. But, are we really any better off rushing from A to B all the time? People who live at a slower pace are clearly less stressed, because they take the time to enjoy each moment instead of rushing past everything at turbo speed.

It’s too easy to forget to live in the moment as we constantly focus on the tasks ahead. We all want to complete our crazy to-do lists before our batteries become depleted and we have to plug ourselves in to recharge – just so we can start all over again in the morning.

The trick is to adjust your focus and ignore all your preconceptions about time. When that inner voice starts screaming inside my head and goes into panic mode if I’m running late, I no longer worry or get stressed. My new approach to time management is simply to switch off my mind and allow my body to go into ‘chilled-dude-on-the-beach’ mode, because there’s plenty of time – mañana, banana! After all, no one else is worried about being on time, so why should I be? If everyone else has embraced this paradigm shift to the way we view time, then who am I to argue?

I suppose the fact that this only occurred to me in recent years just goes to show that wisdom truly does come with age. So relax, sit back, hit that snooze button and don’t stress – tomorrow is another day.

© 2018 Audrey Whyte   All Rights Reserved